1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a time stamping system for electronic documents capable of stamping a certified time and date on each of the electronic documents to certify a preparation time and data of the document as well as to a computer-readable program medium used in the system.
2. Prior Art
Certified time information is required in communication systems for business contract such as those for electronic commerce, electronic authentication, and electronic application. The conventional types of communication systems for business contract have been built on precise time keeping machines such as the GPS or electronic wave clocks, but it has been impossible to certify that the system is operated according to truly correct time information.
The technology for certifying time information is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. HEI 6-501571 (PCT/US91/05386•WO92/03000) entitled “METHOD OF ACCURATELY TIME-STAMPING ON NUMERIC DOCUMENTS”. In this system, when a document prepared by an author is transmitted to an external organization, the external organization prepares a receipt indicating the time of receipt thereof and containing at least a portion of the document and returns the prepared receipt to the author, so that author can store and use the receipt for objectively certifying the preparation data, if necessary.
(Problems to be Solved by the Invention)
With the conventional types of systems as described above, the author stores the receipt at the author's hand, so that the author can show the receipt to a person requiring certification of the document. In this case, however, it is necessary to attach the receipt to the document, and for that purpose it is necessary to store the receipt together with the document, which is troublesome in actual operations.
In the well-known electronic systems for business contracts, it is technologically possible for a person having a malicious intention to disguise as the person having the right to legally acquire the time information. Further, in the case of a time stamp with an electronic signature by a third party, a document to be time-stamped or a digest thereof is sent to an time stamp issuing organization, and the time stamp issuing organization returns the time-stamped document with the time information and their electric signature thereon, so that the operations are complicated and the cost is rather expensive.
Further in the case of the time stamp with an electronic signature by a third party, a time-stamped file and a time stamp certificate (electronic signature) must be stored together, so that its effective utilization is difficult in practice.
In addition, in the case of the time stamp with an electronic signature by a third party, there is a time limit for validity of the electronic signature, so that each time stamp must be updated by the time limit for prolonging the term of validity, which is troublesome in practice.
It is desirable for alleviating the work load that a time stamp can be verified in the offline more, but even if a signature verification key is publicized, there is a time limit in the term of validity for the electronic signature, so that the time stamp must be updated by the time limit for prolonging the term of validity, which is troublesome in practice.
The prevent invention was made to solve the problems as described above, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a time stamping system for electronic documents making it possible to easily time-stamp documents including those prepared with a general purpose document preparation software for certifying preparation dates of the documents and also to easily and accurately verify the dates. It is also an object of the present invention to provide a program medium for the time stamping system for electronic documents as described above.
(Means for Solving the Problems)
A time stamping system for electronic documents according to the present invention is based on the configuration where a digest value generated based on an electronic document prepared by a client electronic document preparation terminal device with electronic document preparation software incorporated therein is transmitted to an external organization device and the external organization device assigns the time of receipt and an electronic signature to the digest value and returns it to the client, in which the client electronic document preparation terminal device comprises an electronic document reading means for reading an electronic document prepared by the electronic document preparation software; a digest value computing means for computing a digest value including a hash value as a unidirectional function value based on a read document; a transmitting means for correlating the digest value to an ID number of the client electronic document preparation terminal device and transmitting the digest value and the ID number to the external organization device; a receiving means for receiving an electronic certificate transmitted thereto from the external organization device with the time of receipt and the electronic signature assigned to the digest value received by the external organization device as well as to the ID number of the client electronic document preparation terminal device; and an electronic certificate inserting and writing means for writing the received electronic certificate in the electronic document to be timestamped stored in the client electronic document preparation terminal device.
A computer-readable program medium for time-stamping electronic documents according to the present invention has a program recorded therein and enabling a computer to realize a function for sending a digest value for an electronic document prepared by a client electronic document preparation terminal device with electronic document preparation software incorporated therein to an external organization device and a function for receiving the electronic certificate returned from the external organization device with the time of receipt and an electronic signature assigned thereby to the digest value, and inserting and writing the electronic certificate in the electronic document to be time-stamped stored in the client electronic document preparation terminal device, in which the client electronic document preparation terminal device has a program recorded therein for enabling a computer to realize an electronic document reading function for reading electronic documents prepared by the electronic document preparation software; a digest value computing function for computing a digest value from the read electronic document alkoxysilane a unidirectional function value thereof; a transmitting function for correlating the digest value to an ID number of the client electronic document preparation terminal device and transmitting the digest value and ID number correlated to each other to the external organization device; a receiving function for receiving the electronic certificate returned from the external organization device with a time stamp and an electronic signature assigned thereto; and an electronic certificate writing function for writing the returned electronic certificate in an electronic document to be time-stamped prepared by the client electronic document preparation terminal device.
As described above, with the time stamping system for electronic documents according to the present invention based on the configuration as described above as well as the program medium for the system, by using add-on application software for preparation of documents, the time stamp processing can be performed to documents treated by the software, and further as a time stamp certificate is buried in the document to be time-stamped, so that there is no need of managing a document to be time-stamped and a time stamp certificate for the document discretely. Further in the present invention, two types of electronic signatures are possible, and a verification key for one type of electronic signature is secret, while that for the other type of electronic signature is public, so that the verification at a high reliability level can be performed also at the user site without losing the high security level.
In the present invention, the software for document preparation is integrated with the time stamping function, so that everyone can easily treat authenticated time data, and a user can select himself or herself an easy verification method or a difficult and strict verification method for verifying a time stamp according to the importance of a document to be verified.